Category: Sailing cruisers

Sailing yachts used for cruising, or as cruiser-racers.

Would you like to see your project here?

Forest & Stream skiff

Just about everyone who comes to these pages is some kind of boat nut, and I’m a boat nut too. I’d like to make this weblog as interesting and useful to us all as possible, and I want to fill it with news and photographs about:

•Projects about old boats, historic boats, traditionally-built boats, and traditionally-derived boats.

•Boating history and traditions.

•The skills involved, the craftsmen and the available training.

So, whether you own these kinds of boats, work on them, sell them, build them, paint or photograph them, write about their history, design them, run a club or organise events, or collect old songs and stories connected with them – if you would like to bring your projects to the attention of a wider public, email me now at gmatkin@gmail.com!

Some more sharpie links

The Wikipedia on sharpies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpie_(boat)

A little something on Iain Oughtred’s splendid Egret-derived sharpie Haiku:
http://www.myasylum.com/sbf/messages/839.html

Reuel Parker also has a version:
http://www.parker-marine.com/28shegretpage.htm

But my favourite is probably Phil Bolger’s famous modern sharpie, the Black Skimmer. I’ve often thought this boat with its flat bottom and leeboards would make a good choice for the Thames Estuary, if you don’t mind a boat with spartan accommodation, and that it has a tenuous kind of connection with the old barge yachts.

More on the Black Skimmer:
http://www.ace.net.au/schooner/bskimmer.htm

And still more – here are some photos of one being built:
http://www.nexusmarine.com/skimmer_construction.html

Black Skimmer plans cost just $40 from Harold H Payson & Co:
http://www.instantboats.com/bskim.html

Click on the picture below for a slightly larger image.

Black Skimmer

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A real-life sharpie

My last post was about a sharpie, and I’m reminded that Dale Austin (the man who built the Apple Pie) is in the middle of a project to build a sharpie derived from Commodore Munroe’s famous sharpie-derivative Egret.

Munroe developed his double-ended and narrow-bottomed internally ballasted shallow-draft sharpie for duties around the shallow waters of the Florida coast. It proved to be a successful and capable boat.

Over the years it has acquired mythic status, not least because the original plans were lost in a fire and attempts to reproduce something like the original boat have met with mixed success.

After several years of spare-time work on and off, Dale is well on with his new boat, which he calls Pangur Ban, and it’s an admirable and striking piece of work. And when it’s launched countless sharpie fans will be fascinated to learn how it works on the water.

One issue is that the boat is rather longer than Dale’s garage, so I’ve included the last photo because it made me smile – letting it stick out through the door was an original not to say heroic solution to an age-old DIY-boat builder problem.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mrwizard/sail/independence/29.html

Sharpie plan

Sharpie Garden

Sharpie garage